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Not Suicide Unit!
Today while sitting in the Zerg Strategy chat-room that Battle.net provides, I saw a bizarre question from a Bronze-League player pop up: "What is the best unit to mass?"
My response came automatically, "Banelings for sure!"
His response bewilders me even now, "Not suicide unit :|"
The Problem
Points. Not ladder points, not achievement points, not even hit points. Nay, this bronzie, and those who think like him are victims of the ghost of video games past. Obviously "retro" arcade-style games with their end-game player score lists are easy examples, but even more modern games like the Turn-Based Strategy series, Advanced Wars, present the problem neatly.
At the end of the game/battle, a score screen is displayed:
Awww yeah, feelings of accomplishment!
Speed obviously corresponds to how fast you killed your opponent, Power is how aggressive you were and how strong your overall attacks were, and then there is Technique. Technique is this annoying little statistic that tracks not only your economy management, but also how many units you made, and how many you lost. Advanced Wars incentivized the preservation of units slightly, but it incentivized unit preservation all the same.
It's an intuitive incentive to provide: gamers hate losing large scale games, but we also greatly dislike losing small scale battles and engagements. Naturally, this extends to games like Starcraft II, where we are making fairly large armies; noone wants to lose the units they've made during the game, it's engrained in us to want to keep what is ours safe.
In our minds we are keeping score for ourselves, we feel good when we keep our units alive, and bad when they die. In games like DotA, this takes the form of an overemphasis on individual Kill-Death ratio, and a massive underemphasis on the bigger picture: pushing lanes and breaking towers.
The problem is this poisonous attitude that any unit that is meant to die must be bad, and in Starcraft 2 at least, this attitude is a huge impediment unless you realize almost every unit you make is meant to die.
The Cure: Epiphany #1
As a Zerg player, I had an epiphany fairly early on: Zerg units are easily killed. If I send a large number of Zerglings at an equal cost of marines, the Zerglings are going to die and kill a very small number of marines. Death, for almost every Zerg unit produced in a game, is more or less inevitable. In a sense, every Zerg unit is a "suicide unit"; they're easily replaced and you usually don't expect many of them to survive if you successfully clean up a push.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/w5K09.png) Zerglings and Marines, moments before a fateful A-click![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/HTmjx.png) Seems like a pretty even trade: 36 Zerglings for 1 Marine
This doesn't stop with obviously one-sided battles however; throw 50 Zerglings at a Siege Tank line in the middle of the map and you're going to take some considerable losses, though you will probably kill all of the tanks. In fact, once I started to develop basic map awareness, my response to an early marine-tank push was to just flood lings and focus down the tanks, before cleaning up the marines.
It was odd; even though I lost 30 Zerglings to his 2 tanks and 15 marines, I felt like I did well in that engagement. In fact, I felt like I had done exactly what I needed to do to hold the push.
The Cure: Epiphany #2
This lead me to a far more important epiphany: Starcraft 2 is not Warcraft III. Warcraft III was all about leveling up your heroes, building a diverse and functional (though small) army, and maximizing your units' individual utility through insane micro to defeat your opponent's army. Starcraft 2 is about securing a strong economy, massing up a large army, and using positioning, army size and army composition to defeat your opponents' army.
The main difference, excluding the hero mechanic of Warcraft III, is the importance of your units. In Starcraft 2, losing 5 Infestors for free at the 20 minute mark is a relatively minor loss. In Warcraft III, losing 5 Necromancers for free can, and usually will cost you the game. Individual units are infinitely more valuable in Warcraft III, because individual units can drastically alter the tide of a battle.
In Warcraft III, preserving your units and keeping them from dying was heavily incentive, because money was short and units took a long time to rebuild. More importantly, that money could be going towards teching up or buying upgrades, and it was absolutely critical not to fall behind in either in Warcraft III.
Starcraft 2 doesn't give quite as much incentive to keep your units alive. Sure, you'd prefer to spend the money you're using to replace your dead units on upgrades or Lair tech, but you aren't going to lose because you ran two lings up a Terrans ramp to check his army comp instead of one.
In short: Zerg units die really fast, but thankfully Starcraft 2 isn't as focused on individual units as Warcraft III was. Instead of focusing on minimizing my losses, I learned to prioritize on maximizing my opponents' losses; whatever I can do to kill what my opponent has built, so long as it isn't a huge gamble risking all of the things I have built, well by god I'm going to do it.
In Summary (tl;dr)
I talk too much, so let me just summarize my point: All Zerg units, generally speaking, are suicide units. They're most likely going to die at some point by being thrown at some army. If the Lings you make at the start of the game last until the end of the game, someone is doing something very wrong.
Consider the following scenario: Terran is walled in; you've got 36 lings and you are, for whatever reason, compelled to push:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/VVrbd.png) Zerglings prior to pushing into a Terran wall![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/jsuQ7.jpg) The Terran wall to be assaulted![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/9ScRx.jpg) The results of the Zergling vs. Wall push...Not so good, eh?
...Huh. No damage done to the Terran whatsoever. Sent all of those Lings - non-suicide units - to kill the Terran's walloff, but they weren't good enough.
Just for kicks and giggles, let's see what happens with 36 Banelings instead:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/z1aC6.png) Banelings prior to pushing into the Wall![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/E8Cys.png) The results of the Baneling vs. Wall push...Much better!
What have we learned? Hopefully that Banelings are a good unit
  
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Of course banelings are good units... they are still horrible to mass. Your example in the end is extremely baised, of course banelings will be better than lings when attacking a wall, over a longer game though, it's just terrible. If you mass a suicide unit, you get a big engagement where you kill your whole opponents army extremely cost-inefficiently, and you have nothing to show for it because your units suicided. While if you do the same thing with lings, you have lings left to keep the aggression going.
A zerg in bronze league can pretty much mass any unit... but I'd say out of all the units to mass, banelings is the worst one.
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Sorry, but that is a ridiculous OP.
36 Lings cost half as much as 36 marines, it's obvious they can't win. Try 72 lings and they will crush those marines (or at least it will be closer).
Also, 36 lings can't break a wall, yes. So you send 36 banelings in... which cost 900 gas, about as much as 7 siege tanks, and 1800 minerals, as much as 36 marines... and you call killing 20 marines, 2 depots and a rax (1350 minerals) better?
Sorry... you might have a point, but the way you present it is totally off.
PS: My epiphany came when i recognized that banelings are BAD in most situations. Each baneling has to hit at least 4 marines to break even (assuming gas is worth twice as much as minerals), so unless you use them successfully as baneling landmines or the opponent doesn't even try to split or has no siege tanks, in most cases you can't trade even remotely cost efficiently with them.
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On April 19 2012 22:19 Morfildur wrote:
Sorry, but that is a ridiculous OP.
36 Lings cost half as much as 36 marines, it's obvious they can't win. Try 72 lings and they will crush those marines (or at least it will be closer).
Also, 36 lings can't break a wall, yes. So you send 36 banelings in... which cost 900 gas, about as much as 7 siege tanks, and 1800 minerals, as much as 36 marines... and you call killing 20 marines, 2 depots and a rax (1350 minerals) better?
Sorry... you might have a point, but the way you present it is totally off.
PS: My epiphany came when i recognized that banelings are BAD in most situations. Each baneling has to hit at least 4 marines to break even (assuming gas is worth twice as much as minerals), so unless you use them successfully as baneling landmines or the opponent doesn't even try to split or has no siege tanks, in most cases you can't trade even remotely cost efficiently with them.
You're right, and you're wrong. If you have even income with your opponent, then yes, you're gonna need some REALLY efficient baneling hits. But, if your income is higher, you can afford to be less cost-effective while still making good trades.
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On April 19 2012 22:19 Morfildur wrote:
Sorry, but that is a ridiculous OP.
36 Lings cost half as much as 36 marines, it's obvious they can't win. Try 72 lings and they will crush those marines (or at least it will be closer).
Herp. I knew something was wrong there; my sleep deprived brain just told me it was fine.
Also, 36 lings can't break a wall, yes. So you send 36 banelings in... which cost 900 gas, about as much as 7 siege tanks, and 1800 minerals, as much as 36 marines... and you call killing 20 marines, 2 depots and a rax (1350 minerals) better?
It's less about illustrating ideal cost-efficient trading, and more about illustrating the goal of maximizing the impact you make on your opponent with the units you have. 36 lings attacking a defended wall do no damage; there's no impact and you just lost 36 lings. 36 banelings attacking a defended wall do a great deal more than 0 damage; sure that scenario is far from ideal in the trading sense, but it illustrates the idea that if a unit is going to die; it may as well make itself useful, and Banelings are by far the best at making themselves useful before they die, in my experience.
Sorry... you might have a point, but the way you present it is totally off.
Don't be sorry for giving a well thought out and pretty much correct critique? I'm a shitty writer and I'm godawful at constructing examples; you're giving me great places to make significant improvements on those flaws, so thank you! =P
PS: My epiphany came when i recognized that banelings are BAD in most situations. Each baneling has to hit at least 4 marines to break even (assuming gas is worth twice as much as minerals), so unless you use them successfully as baneling landmines or the opponent doesn't even try to split or has no siege tanks, in most cases you can't trade even remotely cost efficiently with them.
Correct me if I'm wrong; this is some Platinum level theory-crafting, and according to everyone I talk to, most (if not all) of my theories in SC II are wrong, I'm just not playing people that illustrate how wrong the theories are =P
On average, pretty much no Zerg units are "cost efficient". They're cheap and fast; the tradeoff is that they have to be fairly inefficient at trading blows with other races' units. But your calculus is disregarding a fairly major "resource": time. I'll agree that the ideal scenario would be cost efficient trading with one's opponent in resources, but if you crash an inefficient number of banelings into an opponent's Mech army of half the resource value of your baneling army, I'd say you're still ahead, even if the units lost display disagrees, because as a Zerg, you can remax at the drop of a hat. Your time investment in those Banelings was minimal, especially compared to a Terran's time investment in producing 2-3 Thors.
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When I play Zerg, my units are there to DIE. Now granted, I can understand why some of my fellow dirt leaguers wouldn't be fond of losing a ton of Banelings. When you SUCK, you make things slower, so being Zerg isn't as time efficient.
I avoid Banelings for the most part, but that's just because I like a huge Roach/Hydra ball with some speedlings in my base to kill 18 minute 5 reaper harass. (No, really, this happened last night.)
If your mechanics suck but you at least have some inkling of how the game should be played, banelings are semi-effective, because you can do viable damage with them before your inefficient rebuilding of units. However, the way most Bronze leaguers play (see Gheed's blogs for more information here if you don't understand), you're looking at a single hatch, with rare or no larva injects, not fully saturated mineral line, at around the 15-16 minute mark. At that point, Banelings are the worst unit in the game.
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The unit to mass as zerg isn't baneling. it's either infestor or broodlord (and in the ideal scenario, both). Those are the most cost-efficient zerg units currently in the game if you use them right, and especially together.
I've always hated banelings precisely for the reason you tried to explain, maybe it's because I'm a former wc3 player and I absolutely hate hate hate suicide units, I don't know, but what I do know is that I'd much rather have roaches than banelings
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On April 19 2012 23:04 Incze wrote:
The unit to mass as zerg isn't baneling. it's either infestor or broodlord (and in the ideal scenario, both). Those are the most cost-efficient zerg units currently in the game if you use them right, and especially together.
I've always hated banelings precisely for the reason you tried to explain, maybe it's because I'm a former wc3 player and I absolutely hate hate hate suicide units, I don't know, but what I do know is that I'd much rather have roaches than banelings
Infestors are TERRIBLE in Bronze league. Bear in mind where he said the advice was directed.
I don't think most people understand this, but Bronze actually has it's own metagame that revolves around being bad at SC2.
A spore behind each mineral line isn't blind spore crawlers, it's anticipating the nearly inevitable air harass/drop attempt that both players know you don't have the reaction time to deal with well.
A 10pool can be a food count OR a minute mark.
200/200 void rays at the 48 minute mark is considered "cheese".
Having a 100+ supply count at the 10 minute mark can get you accused of cheating.
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On April 19 2012 22:47 Kasha_Not_Kesha wrote:
On average, pretty much no Zerg units are "cost efficient". They're cheap and fast; the tradeoff is that they have to be fairly inefficient at trading blows with other races' units. But your calculus is disregarding a fairly major "resource": time. I'll agree that the ideal scenario would be cost efficient trading with one's opponent in resources, but if you crash an inefficient number of banelings into an opponent's Mech army of half the resource value of your baneling army, I'd say you're still ahead, even if the units lost display disagrees, because as a Zerg, you can remax at the drop of a hat. Your time investment in those Banelings was minimal, especially compared to a Terran's time investment in producing 2-3 Thors.
Actually zerg has some of the highest cost efficiency and speed, they lack HP, where as Protoss has HP, but lacks speed and cost efficiency on most units. Terran has the second highest cost efficiency, but lacks basic mobility outside of upgrades, and has medium HP its a trade off but zerg is not in as bad a position as you make it seem.
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EPT![[image loading]](http://lpix.org/487605/Chapter1_16.png)
